When I finish a sentence, after much labor, it's finished. A certain point comes at which you can't do any more work on it because you know it will kill the sentence.

It's great people still care about books, and it's great you can still fashion a life from literature.

He knows that after him everything will continue on much as before, except that there will be a minuscule absence, a barely detective gap in the so-called grand scheme, one unit fewer now. Or not even that, not even an empty space where he once was, for all will rush immediately to fill that vacuum. Pft. Gone. Recollections of him will remain in the minds of others for a while, but presently those others too will die and his few relics with them. And then all will be dark.

In my books you have to concentrate, but I work hard to make it that, when you do, the rewards are quite high.

All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.

We think we're living in the present, but we're really living in the past.

With the crime novels, its delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. Its like having a fictitious family.